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PARIS 





TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW SERIES 


DZDALUS, or Science and the Future 
By J. B. S. Haldane 
ICARUS, or The Future of Science 
By the Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S. 
THE MONGOL IN OUR MIDST 
By F. G. Crookshank, M.D. Fully Illustrated 
WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES 
By Prof. A. M. Low. With four Diagrams 
NARCISSUS, An Anatomy of Clothes 
By Gerald Heard. Illustrated 
TANTALUS, or The Future of Man. By F.C.S. Schiller } 
THE PASSING OF‘*THE PHANTOMS 
By Prof. C. J. Patten, M.A., M.D., Sc.D., F.R.A.I. 
CALLINICUS, A .Defence.of Chemical Warfare 
By J. B. S. Haldane 
QUO VADIMUS? Some Glimpses of the Future 
By E. E. Fournier d’Albe, D.Sc., F.Inst.P. 
THE CONQUEST OF CANCER 
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HYPATIA, or Woman and Knowledge 
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LYSISTRATA, or Woman’s Future and Future Woman 
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WHAT I BELIEVE 
By the Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S. 
PERSEUS, or Of Dragons. By H.F. Scott Stokes, M.A. 
THE FUTURE OF SEX. By Rebecca West 
THE EVOCATION OF GENIUS. By Alan Porter 
AESCULAPIUS, or Disease and The Man 
By F. G. Crookshank, M.D. 
PROTEUS, or The Future of Intelligence. By Vernon Lee 
THAMYRIS, or Is there a Future for Poetry? 
By R. C. Trevelyan 
PROMETHEUS, or Biology and the Advancement 
of Man. By H. S. Jennings 
PARIS, or The Future of War 
By Captain B. H. Liddell Hart 


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PARIS 


OR 


The Future of War 


BY. 


Carr. BYE’ LIDDELL HART 





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E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
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37 9 .Mrs-O L-Schmidt | 


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a 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


THE Peele a Woe Eo es: 
JECTIVE eA 


PERMANENT NATIONAL oBy ECTS 
THE Redan! othe Sane IN 
WAR 


HISTORICAL EXAMPLES OF ne 
MORAL OBJECTIVE . ., 


THE Pr aeie TO THE MORAL OB- 
JECTIVE SE SERN Cay 


THE AIR WEAPON . : 
OBJECTIONS TO THE AIR-ATTACK 
ARE ARMIES AND NAVIES OBSO- 

LIE EM Poise het ietuheen att cuie 
THE NAVAL WEAPON 


THE ARMY WEAPON . ° 
RT See Nee OF path eee 


BRILOCUR I SC hs 


1 


10 
18 


19 











PARIS 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


Ir is no purpose of this little book to 
discuss whether a repetition of war is 
likely or unlikely, or to speculate on the 
dawn of universal peace. The writer 
prefers to take his stand on universal 
experience, as contained in _ history, 
observing that the path of history is 
strewn with idealistic tombstones — the 
Holy Alliance, the mid-Victorian Man- 
chester School, the Hague Conventions. 
The Great Exhibition of 1851 was to 
inaugurate a Golden Age, to be the 
concrete symbol of the millennium, yet 
within a decade the four chief Powers 
in Europe had reconverted their plough- 
shares into swords, and the North 
[aa 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


American continent was torn by a fratri- 
cidal conflict. To abolish war we must 
remove its cause, which lies in the 
imperfections of human nature. The way 
to “peace on earth” is by the progressive 
and general growth of “ good-will towards 
men,’ by a transformation of the spirit 
of man instead of a futile attempt to bind 
his fists—cords from which he can easily 
break free, if so disposed. This changed 
spirit must be world-wide, for peace- 
loving nations, especially if prosperous 
and possessed of rich territory who aban- 
don their defences, invite and indeed pro- 
voke aggression as much as a flock of 
well-nourished sheep with a lean and 
hungry wolf in the fold. In the seven- 
teenth century the Protestant states of 
North Germany complaining that the 
expense of maintaining armed forces ex- 
ceeded the possible benefit of their pro- 
tection, prated thus—‘“ let us behave with 
justice to all men, and all men will behave 
with justice towards us.” They speedily 
found the fallacy of this faith in an im- 
perfect world, their protests of neutrality 
an inadequate shield against the rapacity 
of their neighbours. 


[2] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


In the years immediately following the 
Great War, idealists thought to cure the 
ills of the body politic, as well as human, 
by a monotonous repetition of the jingle, 
“Day by day, and in every way, we are 
getting better and better,” but disillusion- 
ment came, and the peoples of the world 
are realizing that international Couéism is 
as futile to cure real disease as its pseudo- 
medical counterpart. 

Regarding war as a hard fact, as a 
doctor called in to a sick patient views 
disease, our concern here is simply with 
the course of the malady, our object 
being to gauge its future tendencies, in 
order, if possible, to limit its ravages 
and by scientific treatment ensure the 
speedy and complete recovery of the 
patient. As diagnosis comes before 
treatment, the first step is to examine 
the patient, estimate the gravity of his 
condition, and discover the seat of the 
trouble. 

The Great War caused the direct 
sacrifice of eight million lives, to which 
the British Isles alone contributed three- 
quarters of a million. So ineffectual was 
the treatment prescribed by the military 


[3] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


practitioners who were called in that the 
illness took over four years to run its 
course, during which the financial tem- 
perature mounted daily, until for this 
country alone it reached a cost of 
£8,000,000 a day. Our total war 
expenditure was nearly ten thousand 
million pounds; our National Debt has 
been increased tenfold. Moreover, these 
long years of strain and want so impaired 
the physical health of the peoples that 
they fell an easy prey to epidemic 
diseases, and the influenza scourge of 
1918 and 1919 cost, among the civilian 
population of the world, more than 
twice as many lives as were lost in 
battle. 

It is surely clear that any further wars 
conducted on similar methods must mean 
the breakdown of Western civilization. 
Is there an alternative? To answer this 
question the obvious course is to ascertain 
what were the foundations on which the 
military leaders of the Great War built 
their doctrine of war, and then to ex- 
amine these in the light of reason and 
experience—as embodied in history. The 
traditional military mind is notoriously 


[4] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


sensitive to any breath of criticism, and 
any attempt to tear aside the veil of its 
mystery is apt to be greeted by the cry of 
“ sacrilege.” Occasionally some daring 
soldier has done so—and has paid the 
penalty for exposing to lay eyes the emp- 
tiness of the shrine. Thus Marshal Saxe 
in his eighteenth-century Reveries on the 
art of war, declared that ‘‘ custom and 
prejudice confirmed by ignorance are its 
sole foundation and support,” for which 
temerity Carlyle, the disciple and mouth- 
piece of the Frederician dogmas, poured 
scorn on his book as “a strange military 
farrago, dictated, as I should think, under 
opium.” 

Similarly, a generation before the Great 
War, Monsieur Bloch, the civilian banker 
of Warsaw, forecast its nature with ex- 
traordinary prescience, only to be ridi- 
culed by the General Staffs of Europe. 
Yet the stalemate that he predicted would 
arise from the clash of “nations in arms” 
came true—with the sole difference that 
he underestimated the blind obstinacy of 
the leaders and the passivity of the led in 
continuing for four more years to run 
their heads against a brick wall. 


[5] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


Now, however, in these post-war years: 
of disillusionment, is the time to take 
stock of the exorbitant cost of the war in 
lives and money, of the moral and eco- 
nomic exhaustion that is its fruit. Though 
professional experience in any department 
of life is the way to executive skill, con- 
centration on technical problems has a 
notorious tendency to narrow the vision. 
Hence, while paying tribute to the pro- 
fessional ability shown in the later phases 
of the 1918 campaign, we are justified, 
standing amid the débris, in questioning 
the strategic aim and direction of the 
war. 

What was the objective of the Allies” 
strategy? The memoirs and despatches. 
of the responsible military leaders reveal 
that it was the destruction of the enemy’s 
armed forces in the main theatre of war. 

As the proverb tells us, it is no use 
crying over spilt milk, nor even over spilt 
blood and money —the price for this 
empty triumph has been paid by the ordi- 
nary citizens of the nations, yoked like 
““dumb, driven oxen” to the chariot of 
Mars. 

What we are concerned with is the 


[6 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


future, and it is the worst of omens that 
the orthodox military school, still gener- 
ally in power as the advisers of govern- 
ments, cling obstinately to this dogma, 
blind apparently to the futility of the 
Great War, both in its strategy and its 
fruits. Of these military Bourbons, re- 
stored to the seats of authority in most 
capitals, the saying may be echoed: 
“ They have learnt nothing and forgotten 
nothing ”’—if one may judge by the post- 
war manuals of the various countries, 
and the utterances of generals and 
admirals, 

New weapons would seem to be 
regarded merely as an additional tap 
through which the bath of blood can be 
filled all the sooner. Not long ago, in 
The Times, a distinguished admiral ar- 
gued that as “the first and greatest prin- 
ciple of war” was the destruction of the 
armed forces of the enemy, the only cor- 
rect objective for aircraft in war must be 
the enemy air-force. 

Thus in this new element, the air, is 
to be reincarnated the Napoleonic theory 
—for the doctrine on which the last war 
was fought, and the next one will be if 


[7] 


s 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


wisdom does not prevail, is the disastrous 
legacy of the Corsican vampire, who 
drained the blood of Europe a century 
back. 

From 1870 to 1918 the General Staffs 
of the Powers were obsessed with the 
Napoleonic legend; instead of reconnoi- 
tring the future in the light of universal 
history they were purely looking back- 
ward on a military Sodom and Gomorrah, 
until, like Lot’s wife, they and their 
doctrines became petrified. 

What is the tenor of this doctrine? 
First, that there is only one true objective 
in war— the destruction of the enemy’s 
main forces on the battlefield.” Even 
the most hair-splitting partisan of the or- 
thodox school cannot dispute this state- 
ment without throwing overboard all the 
textbooks and regulations produced by the 
General Staffs of Europe and America 
for generations past. Second, that the 
means of gaining this objective is to pile 
up greater numbers than the enemy. Ob- 
viously the surest way to achieve this is to 
call up and put into the field the whole 
manhood of a nation, and so has grown 
up as a Sigua to the Napoleonic 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


theory of the “ objective” another equally 
short-sighted dogma—that of the “nation 
in arms,” with its blind worship of quan- 
tity rather than quality. 

Pacifists are fond of talking about the 
“armaments race.’ A curious sort of race 
—for which ponderous cart-horses are 
bred instead of steeple-chasers, and where 
the trainers clap “‘ mass objective ” blink- 
ers on the horses’ heads, while the jockeys 
ride looking back over their shoulders. 
Then they wonder why instead of taking 
their fences freely the poor horses fall at 
the first open ditch, and cannot be got out 
under four years? 

There would seem to be a slight hitch 
somewhere in this Napoleonic doctrine. 


[9] 


THE ORIGINS OF THE FALSE OBJECTIVE 


How arose this “ blinkered” conception 
that the national goal in war could be 
attained only by mass destruction, and 
how did it gain so firm a hold on military 
thought? The decisive influence was ex- 
erted not by Napoleon himself, though his 
practical example of the beneficent re- 
sults of “absolute war” was its inspira- 
tion, but by his great German expositor, 
Carl von Clausewitz. He it was who, in 
the years succeeding Waterloo, ana- 
lysed, codified, and deified the Napoleonic 
method. 

Clausewitz has been the master at 
whose feet have sat for a century the 
military students of Europe. From him, 
the German Army in particular drew the 
inspiration by which they evolved their 
stupendous, if fundamentally unsound, 
structure of “the nation in arms.” It 
achieved its triumph in 1870 and, as a 


[10] 


THE FALSE OBJECTIVE 


result, all the Powers hurried to imitate 
the model, and to revive with ever greater 
intensity the Napoleonic tradition, until 
finally the gigantic edifice was put to an 
extended test in the years 1914-1918— 
with the result that in its fall it has 
brought low not only Germany, but, with 
it, the rest of Europe. 

Thus, because of the unsoundness of 
their foundations, Clausewitz’s theories 
have ended by bringing his Fatherland 
into a more impotent and impoverished 
state even than when it was under the 
iron heel of Napoleon. Clausewitz’s was 
truly “a house built on sand.” 

Yet, despite his main miscalculations, 
he had a wider understanding of the 
objects of war than most of his disciples. 
Clausewitz did at least recognize the 
existence of other objectives besides the 
armed forces. He enumerated three 
general objects—the military power, the 
country, and the will of the enemy. But 
his vital mistake was to place “the will ”’ 
last in his list, instead of first and embrac- 
ing all the others, and to maintain that 
the destruction of the enemy’s main 
armies was the best i to ensure the 

[ 11 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


remaining objects. Similarly, the other 
most famous military teacher of the 
century before the Great War, Marshal 
Foch, admitted the existence and wisdom, 
under certain conditions, of other means, 
but, as with Clausewitz, the reservations 
were forgotten, and his disciples remem- 
bered only his assertion that “the true 
theory” of war was “that of the 
absolute war which Napoleon had taught 
Europe.” 

This was but human nature, for the 
followers of any great teacher demand a 
single watchword, however narrow. The 
idea of preserving a broad and balanced 
point of view is anathema to the mass, 
who crave for a slogan and detest the 
complexities of independent thought. It 
is not surprising that military thought 
in recent generations, in its blind worship 
of the idol of “absolute war,” has poured 
scorn on the objectives of Napoleon’s 
predecessors — curiously forgetting that 
they at least gained the purpose of their 
policy, whereas his ended in ruin. One 
and all spoke and wrote with contempt 
of these eighteenth-century strategists, 
though they ene such men as Mar- 

12 ] 


THE FALSE OBJECTIVE 


shal Saxe, whose writings bear the im- 
press of a mind perhaps more original and 
unbiased by traditional prejudices than 
any in military history. 

Here is how Foch, in his Principes de 
Guerre, contrasts the exponents of the 
rival theories: ‘‘ Marshal de Saxe, albeit 
a man of undeniable ability, said: ‘I am 
not in favour of giving battle. ... I am 
even convinced that a clever general can 
wage war his whole life without being 
compelled to do so.’ Entering Saxony in 
1806, Napoleon writes to Marshal Soult: 
‘ There is nothing I desire so much as a 
great battle.’ The one wants to avoid 
battle his whole life; the other demands 
it at the first opportunity.” 

So that even a man of the intellectual 
calibre of Marshal Foch thinks solely of 
the tangible proofs of military victory, 
with never a reflection as to which of 
these two men best fulfilled ultimately 
the national objective of an honourable, 
secure, and prosperous future. 

We see him greeting with approval the 
dictum of Clausewitz: ‘“‘ Blood is the 
price of victory. You must either resort 
to it or give up waging war. All reasons 


[13 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


of humanity which you might advance 
will only expose you to being beaten by a 
less sentimental adversary.” 

In the latter sentence we see the recur- 
ring delusion of the traditional military 
mind that the opposition to the Napol- 
eonic theory must necessarily be dictated 
by mere sentimentalism. It disregards 
the possibility that it may be due to a 
far-sighted political economy, which does 
not lose sight of the post-war years. A 
prosperous and secure peace is a better 
monument of victory than a pyramid of 
skulls. 

There are signs, however, that Marshal 
Foch, in contrast to his intellectual com- 
peers, has gained from recent experience 
a wider conception of the aims of war and 
the true objective of military policy. In 
a statement since the War on the subject 
of air-power, he gave the weighty and 
illuminating judgment that “ The poten- 
tialities of aircraft attack on a large scale 
are almost incalculable, but it is clear that 
such attack, owing to its crushing moral 
effect on a nation, may impress public 
opinion to the point of disarming the 
Government and ieee become decisive.” 

[14 


THE FALSE OBJECTIVE 


Here is a dramatic and far-reaching 
break with the “armed forces ”’ objective. 
Perhaps also his connection with the Ruhr 
policy is evidence of a grasp of the pos- 
sibilities not only of war without blood- 
shed, but war without hostilities—the ob- 
jective, more effective than the enemy’s 
military power, being control of the rival’s 
industrial resources. 

* Saul is numbered with the prophets!” 
The champion and embodiment of the 
Napoleonic doctrine appears to have cast 
it overboard. We see an indisputable rec- 
ognition that two other objectives exist— 
one moral, the other economic. 

If the conversion comes a little late, 
when we are enjoying the happy and 
prosperous peace procured for us by the 
method of “absolute war” so eloquently 
preached in pre-war years by this august 
teacher, it may at least acquit us of lése- 
majesté in suggesting, that by their blind 
worship of the Napoleonic idol, our re- 
cent military guides not only narrowed 
and distorted their whole conception of 
war, but led us into the morass—finan- 
cial, commercial, and moral—wherein the 
nations of Europe in greater or less de- 


[25 3 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


gree are now engulfed—as was France 
after Napoleon. 

When the high priest of the orthodox 
faith begins to have doubts, the moment 
is ripe for those who do not hold that the 
advent of Napoleon was the Year One of 
military history, who are disciples of 
earlier Great Captains, to endeavour, in 
all humility, to propound a wider and 
more scientific conception of war and its 
true objective. 

Thus, should the millennium of Univer- 
sal Peace fail to arrive, and nations still 
continue to settle by an appeal to force 
questions which vitally affect their pol- 
icy, it may be that they will learn to wage 
war in a manner less injurious to the in- 
terwoven fabric of modern civilization, 
and incidentally to their own prosperity 
and ultimate security, than proved the 
case in the Great War of 1914-1918. Se- 
curity—yes, because the greater the in- 
jury inflicted, the deeper are the sores of 
the body politic, and in these the toxins of 
revenge fester. 

But to achieve this more scientific and 
economic military policy it is necessary 
that public opinion Soa be awakened 

[ 16 ] 


THE FALSE OBJECTIVE 


not only to the results but also to the 
false foundations of the present theory of 
war. | 

The saying that “the onlooker sees 
most of the game” is as true of the 
broader aspects of war as of anything 
else, and in the unfettered common sense 
of the intelligent citizen, and its reaction 
on those entrusted with the military 
weapons, lies the quickest chance of de- 
liverance from this dogma—for military 
authority holds with Bishop Warburton 
that “orthodoxy is my doxy—heterodoxy 
is another man’s doxy.” 

Soldiers who refuse to bow in adoration 
of Napoleon and Clausewitz, his prophet, 
are condemned as heretics, and the re- 
pression of the “ Protestants” has been 
made possible by the apathy of the public 
towards military questions. Men of the 
Anglo-Saxon race are not willing to hand 
over their religious or political conscience 
into the keeping of “authority,” yet by 
their lack of interest in military questions 
they do in fact relinquish any check on 
a policy which affects the security of 
their lives and livelihoods to an even 
greater extent. For, when war bursts 


[17] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


upon the nation, it is the ordinary citi- 
zens who pay the toll either with their 
lives or from their pockets. Only by 
taking an active interest in the broad 
aspects of national defence, and so re- 
gaining control of their military con- 
science, can they avoid being driven like 
sheep to the shearer and slaughterhouse, 
as in the last war. 


PERMANENT NATIONAL OBJECTS 


If the citizens of a nation were asked 
what should be the general aim of the 
national policy, they would reply, in tenor 
if not in exact words, that it should be 
such as to guarantee them “an honour- 
able, prosperous, and secure existence.” - 

No normal citizen of a democracy 
would willingly imperil this by a resort 
to war. Only when he considers, or it is 
suggested to him convincingly, that his 
honour, prosperity, or security are en- 
dangered by the policy of another nation, 
will he consent to the grave step of mak- 
ing war. 

[18] 


THE NATIONAL OBJECTIVE 


THE NATIONAL OBJECTIVE IN WAR 


When, however, the fateful decision for 
war has been taken, what does common 
sense tell us should be the national objec- 
tive? To ensure a resumption and pro- 
gressive continuance of what may be 
termed the peace-time policy, with the 
shortest and least costly interruption of 
the normal life of the country. 

What stands in the way of this? The 
determination of the hostile nation to en- 
force its contrary policy in defiance of our 
own aims and desires. To gain our aim or 
objective we have to change this adverse 
will into a compliance with our own 
policy, and the sooner and more cheaply 
in lives. and money we can do this, 
the better chance is there of a continu- 
ance of national prosperity in the widest 
sense. 

The aim of a nation in war is, there- 
fore, to subdue the enemy’s will to resist, 
with the least possible human and eco- 
nomic loss to itself. 

If we realize that this is the true 
objective, we shall appreciate the fact 


[ 19 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


that the destruction oi the enemy’s armed 
forces is but a means—and not neces- 
sarily an inevitable or infallible one—to 
the attainment of our goal. It is clearly 
not, despite the assertion of military 
pundits, the sole true objective in war. 
Clear the air of the fog of catchwords 
which surrounds the conduct of war, 
grasp that in the human will lies the 
source and mainspring of all conflict, as 
of all other activities of man’s life, and 
it becomes transparently clear that our 
goal in war can only be attained by the 
subjugation of the opposing will. All 
acts, such as defeat in the field, propa- 
ganda, blockade, diplomacy, or attack 
on the centres of government and popu- 
lation, are seen to be but means to that 
end; and, instead of being tied to one 
fixed means, we are free to weigh the 
respective merits of each. To choose 
whichever are most suitable, most rapid, 
and most economic, #.e., which will gain 
the goal with the minimum disruption 
of our national life during and after the 
war. Of what use is decisive victory in 
battle if we bleed to death as a result 


of it? 
[ 20 ] 


THE NATIONAL OBJECTIVE 


A single man can be beaten by the 
simple process of killing him. Not so a 
nation—for total extermination, even if 
it were possible, would recoil on the heads 
of the victors in the close-knit organiza- 
tion of the world’s society, and would in- 
volve their own ethical and commercial 
ruin—as we have had a foretaste from the 
attrition policy of the Great War. But 
besides being mutually deadly it is un- 
necessary, for a highly organized state is 
only as strong as its weakest link. In a 
great war the whole nation is involved, 
though not necessarily, or wisely, under 
arms, The fists and the sinews of war 
are mutually dependent, and, if we can 
demoralize one section of the nation, the 
collapse of its will to resist compels the 
surrender of the whole—as the last 
months of 1918 demonstrated. 

It is the function of grand strategy 
to discover and exploit the Achilles’ heel 
of the enemy nation; to strike not 
against its strongest bulwark but against 
its most vulnerable spot. In the earliest 
recorded war, Paris, son of Priam, King 
of Troy, thus slew the foremost champion. 
of the Greeks. As the Greek legend runs, 


[21 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


Achilles, when a child, having been dipped 
by his mother, Thetis, in the waters of 
the Styx, his whole body became invul- 
nerable save only the heel by which she 
held him. In the Trojan war, after 
Achilles had slain Hector in direct com- 
bat, Paris brought stratagem to bear, and 
his arrow, guided by Apollo, struck 
Achilles in his vulnerable heel. It is sig- 
nificant that Apollo, among his numerous 
attributes, was held to be the sun god, 
and the god of prophecy, for here surely 
he forecast the future of war, and shed 
light on the true objective—a ray of truth 
too dazzling for the vision of all but a 
few soldiers. 

After dashing out the lives of millions 
in vain assault against the enemy’s 
strength, it might not be amiss now to 
take a lesson from the objective aimed at 
by Paris three thousand years ago. 

Turning from myth to history, it may 
be useful to glance at two authentic ex- 
amples of the use of the moral objective 
—which in each case changed the course 
of the world’s history. 


224 


HISTORICAL EXAMPLES 


HISTORICAL EXAMPLES OF THE MORAL 
OBJECTIVE 


First, from the Punic Wars. In the 
struggle between Rome and Carthage 
for the domination of the ancient world, 
the two mother cities with their govern- 
ment and population form the vital 
points —the moral objective. Hannibal, 
the Carthaginian leader, lives in history 
as, with Napoleon, the supreme military 
executant of all time. Yet similarly he 
appears to lack the gift of “grand 
strategical”” vision. His objective is the 
armed forces of the enemy, but even the 
annihilating victory of Cannz does not 
bring him to his goal, because Rome itself 
stands unmastered. The apologists for 
Hannibal are legion, but they cannot 
obscure the truth that by his failure to 
gain Rome he ultimately lost Carthage. 
Scipio Africanus, his ultimate conqueror 
at Zama, suffers from the misfortune that 
his own claims to fame are overshadowed 
by his adversary’s dramatic victories 
and heroic stand in Italy for so many 
years, which appeal to the sentimental 


[ 23 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


imagination. But Scipio’s appreciation 
of the principle of the objective is surely 
more profound. Instead of seeking a 
decision in Italy, where his troops would 
suffer under the moral influence of 
Hannibal’s repeated victories in that 
theatre, Scipio, in face of the most 
weighty protests, embarks for Carthage. 
His immediate objective is to free Italy, 
and he realizes that a threat to Carthage 
will so act upon the moral of the citizens 
that they will recall Hannibal. The 
result proves the soundness of his judg- 
ment. Then, by striking at the resources 
of Carthage in Northern Africa he 
accomplishes the next step towards the 
subjugation of the Carthaginian will, 
and so to Zama, the flight of Hannibal 
himself to the East, and the capitulation 
of Carthage. Scipio’s moral objective 
triumphs over the “ armed forces ” theory 
of Hannibal. 

Turning to the history of the modern 
world, we have the example of the 
campaign of 1814, which ended in 
Napoleon’s abdication and relegation to 
the Isle of Elba. Never perhaps in his 

. whole career does Napoleon’s genius shine 


[ 24] 


HISTORICAL EXAMPLES 


so brightly as in that series of dramatic 
victories in February and March, 1814, 
by which he staggers the Allies, until, in 
pursuit of the delusive military objective, 
he over-reaches himself. He moves east 
to fall upon Schwarzenberg’s rear, drawn 
on by the theory of destroying the main 
mass of the enemy’s forces. By this 
move he uacovers Paris—and the Allies 
march straight forward to gain the true 
objective—the nerve centre of the French 
will to resist. Paris is the prey of war 
alarms and fatigue, in the very condition 
for a moral detonator to wreck Napoleon’s 
hold. The Royalist, de Vitrolles, tells 
the Czar Alexander that “ People are tired 
of the war and of Napoleon. Consider 
politics rather than strategy, and march 
straight on Paris, where the true opinion 
of the people will be shown the moment 
the Allies appear.’ Captured despatches 
also bear witness to the underlying dis- 
content of the Capital. The Czar sum- 
mons a council of war. Barclay de Tolly, 
the senior, urges that the forces should 
be concentrated, to follow and attack 
Napoleon. General Toll affirms that 
there is only one true course, to “ advance 


[25] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


on Paris by forced marches with the 
whole of our army, detaching only 10,000 
cavalry to mask our movement.” 

Barclay de Tolly disagrees and argues 
the example—so hackneyed in later years 
—of the occupation of Moscow. Toll 
points out that the effect of the seizure 
of Paris will be decisive economically and 
morally, and that there is no true parallel 
between the cases of Moscow and Paris 
—the nodal point of France. 

The Czar decides for Toll’s plans, the 
army sweeps on Paris and enters in 
triumph after but the slightest resistance, 
while Napoleon is winning delusive suc- 
cesses in Lorraine. When the news from 
Paris reaches him, he thinks frantically 
of a counter-march, but the moral germ 
disseminated by the occupation of Paris 
spreads even among his generals and 
troops. Too late! So great are the moral 
repercussions of the act, that in a brief 
space Napoleon, with the people and his 
satellites turned against him, is forced to 
an unconditional abdication. 

Some might suggest that the German 
failure to achieve victory in I914 is a 
still more recent en of the truth that 

2 


MEANS TO OBJECTIVE 


the moral objective is the real one. His- 
tory may well decide that had the German 
_ Higher Command been less obsessed with 
the dream of a Canne manceuvre, and 
struck at Paris first instead of attempting 
to surround the French armies, ‘“‘ Deutsch- 
land iiber alles” might now be an accom- 
plished fact. 

On the island of Corfu is a giant statue 
of Achilles, with his heel transfixed by 
the arrow. Countless hours the ex- 
Kaiser spent gazing at this statue, yet its 
message apparently made no impression. 
“Whom the gods wish to destroy they 
first make... ”—blind. 


THE MEANS TO THE MORAL OBJECTIVE 


After this brief historical survey, let us 
turn to consider the means by which the 
moral objective, of subduing the enemy’s 
will to resist, can be attained. These 
means can be exercised in the military, 
the economic, the political, or the social 
spheres. Further, the weapons by which 
they are executed may be military, eco- 


[ 27 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


nomic, or diplomatic—with which is in- 
cluded propaganda. 

As war is our subject, the diplomatic 
and economic weapons, except in a 
military guise, are outside our purview. 
There appears little doubt, however, that 
the economic weapon in the struggle be- 
tween rival national policies during so- 
called peace has possibilities still scarcely 
explored or understood. Again, the mili- 
tary weapon can be wielded in the eco- 
nomic sphere without any open state of 
war existing. In the Ruhr we saw the 
French aiming, by a military control of 
Germany’s industrial resources, to subdue 
the latter’s will to resist French policy, 
and with the further motive of a moral 
disruption between the German states. 

What, however, are the ways in which 
the military weapon can be employed 
to subdue the enemy’s will to resist in 
war? 

The question demands that we first ex- 
amine how the moral attack takes effect, 
and how the will of an enemy people is 
reduced to such a degree that they will 
sue for peace rather than face a continua- 
tion of the Sees Put in a nutshell, 

[ 28 ] 


MEANS TO OBJECTIVE 


the result is obtained by dislocating their 
normal life to such a degree that they will 
prefer the lesser evil of surrendering their 
policy, and by convincing them that any 
return to “normalcy ”—to use President 
Harding’s term—is hopeless unless they 
do so surrender. It is an old proverb that 
“So long as there is life, there is hope,” 
and this Ciceronian saw may be adduced 
to support the argument that in the case 
of people who fight best “ with their 
backs to the wall” only death will end 
their resistance. This may be true of 
individuals, or even of considerable bodies 
of men; the annals of the Anglo-Saxon 
race afford examples—though such cases 
have almost always occurred when 
surrender was as fatal as continued 
resistance. As soldiers know well, time 
throws an heroic glamour over events of 
the past, and national pride leads to 
pardonable exaggeration of great deeds. 
Such résistance a mort is probably as rare 
as that mythical bayonet charge and 
hand-to-hand clash with cold steel so 
beloved of tradition and the painter of 
battle scenes. The latter myth was 
exposed by the long-dead Ardant du 


[ 29 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


Picq, that French soldier-realist who 
refused to bow before the altar of the 
martial tradition. And the Great War 
finally dissipated it. Imaginative sol- 
diers, especially those in the supply ser- 
vices, might write letters home describing 
such close quarter fights, war-corre- 
spondents safely behind the lines might 
retail such martial exploits for the ben- 
efit of a sensation-loving public, but 
the real fighting soldier soon found that 
two sides did not cross bayonets in 
mortal conflict. The weaker broke and 
fled, or else threw up their hands as 
token of surrender the moment they re- 
alized the actual shock could no longer be 
warded off. 

The normal man, immediately he recog- 
nizes a stronger, directly he realizes the 
hopelessness of overcoming his enemy, 
always yields. Nor is man unique in this 
respect, as any study of animal life will 
confirm. 

Armies and nations are mainly com- 
posed of normal men, not of abnormal 
heroes, and once these realize the perma- 
nent superiority of the enemy they will 
surrender to force majeure. 


[30] 


MEANS TO OBJECTIVE 


History, even Anglo-Saxon history, 
shows that nations bow to the inevitable, 
and abandon their policy rather than 
continue a struggle once hope has van- 
ished. No war between civilized people 
has been carried, nor anywhere near 
carried, to the point of extermination. 
The living alone retain the power to ad- 
mit defeat, and since wars, therefore, are 
ended by surrender and not by extermi- 
nation, it becomes apparent that defeat is 
the result not of loss of life, save, at the 
most, indirectly and partially, but by loss 
of moral. 

The enemy nation’s will to resist is 
subdued by the fact or threat of making 
life so unpleasant and difficult for the 
people that they will comply with your 
terms rather than endure this misery. We 
use the words “ or threat ” because some- 
times a nation, directly its means of re- 
sistance —its forces—— were overthrown, 
has hastened to make peace before its 
territory was actually invaded. Such 
timely surrender is merely a recognition 
of the inevitable consequences. 

In what ways is this pressure exerted? 
Partly through the stomach, partly 


{ 31] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


through the pocket, and partly through 
the spirit. In the “good old days” 
more forcible physical measures were 
practised, burning, pillage, and rapine. 
But in the present age the wholesale and 
avowed use of such persuasive aids is 
barred by the ethical code of nations— 
and press publicity, though, as~the last 
war showed, still indulged in sporadically 
with or without the specious excuse of 
reprisals.’ But if the international 
conscience is too tender to permit this 
direct violence, it swallows its qualms 
where the people’s will to resist is under- 
mined by the indirect method of wholesale 
starvation. Deprive individuals of food 
and there is an outcry, cut off the food 
supply of a nation and the moral sense of 
the world is undisturbed. Thus the naval 
weapon is pre-eminently the means of 
applying “stomach” pressure, because 
its blockade is indirect instead of direct, 
general instead of particular. As noth- 
ing more surely undermines moral than 
starvation, a blockade would seem obvi- 
ously the best means to gain the moral 
objective were it not for two grave dis- 
advantages. First, it can only be success- 


[ 32 ] 


MEANS TO OBJECTIVE 


ful where the enemy country is not 
self-supporting, and can be entirely sur- 
rounded—or at any rate its supplies from 
outside effectively intercepted. Second, it 
is slow to take effect, and so imposes a 
strain on the resources of the blockading 
country. 

Pressure through “the pocket” can 
be exerted directly by levies, confiscation, 
or seizure of customs—which require a 
military occupation— and indirectly by 
the general dislocation of business and 
the stoppage of the enemy’s commerce. 
Above all, as the military forces of a 
modern nation are but the wheels of the 
car of war, dependent for their driving 
power on the engine — the nation’s 
industrial resources—it follows that a 
breakdown in the engine or in the trans- 
mission — the means of transport and 
communication — will inevitably render 
the military forces immobile and power- 
less. Just as the engine and transmission 
of an automobile, because of the intricacy 
and delicacy of their joints and working 
parts, are far more susceptible to damage 
than the road wheels, so in a modern 
nation at war its industrial resources and 


£334 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


communications form its Achilles’ heel. 
Mere common sense should tell us that if 
possible these are the points at which to 
strike. 

Pressure on “the spirit” is intimately 
connected with that on “the pocket,” a 
thorough and long-continued interruption 
of the normal life of a nation is as de- 
pressing and demoralizing as the intimida- 
tion of the people by methods of terrorism 
—which, even if temporarily successful, 
usually react among civilized nations to 
the detriment of the aggressor by stimu- 
lating the will to resist or by so outraging 
the moral sense of otlier nations as to pave 
the way for their intervention. 

In the past a military occupation of the 
hostile country has generally been the 
ultimate method of bringing to bear this 
pressure on the spirit, and may still be 
necessary against semi-civilized peoples 
spread out in little self-supporting com- 
munities, whose material wants are simple, 
and who offer no highly organized indus- 
trial and economic system for attack or 
control by an enemy. 

But though the indignity and restric- 
tions that arise from a military occupa- 


{ 34] 


MEANS TO OBJECTIVE 


tion are always galling, the conscience of 
the world forbids, or at least limits, the 
terrorism of earlier times and so makes 
the mere presence of an invading army 
less irksome. Conversely, with the growth 
of civilization the dislocation or control 
of an enemy’s industrial centres and com- 
munications becomes both more effective 
and more easy as the means by which to 
subdue his will to resist. 

Every modern industrial nation has 
its vitals; in one case it may be essential 
mining areas, in another manufacturing 
districts, a third may be dependent on 
overseas trade coming into its ports, a 
fourth so highly centralized that its capi- 
tal is the real as well as the nominal heart 
of its life. In most cases there is a blend 
of these several factors, and in all the 
regular flow of transport along its arteries 
is a vital requirement. 

As warships are tied to the sea, they 
cannot penetrate into an enemy country ; 
as, moreover, they are notoriously at a 
disadvantage against land defences, they 
cannot even occupy his ports. Hence 
they are limited to indirect action against 
the enemy’s vitals—either by blockade, 


[35] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


by enabling troops to be landed, or nowa- 
days by serving as a mobile base for air- 
craft which can strike at “ nerve centres ” 
within some 250 miles of the coast. 

Armies have hitherto been the means of 
‘direct action,’ whether against the re- 
sources of the enemy nation, the intimi- 
dation of the people, or by the capture 
or overthrow of individuals who were the 
mainspring of the opposing policy. 

Armies, however, suffer one serious 
handicap in subduing the hostile will. 
Being tied to one plane of movement, 
compelled to move across the land, it has 
rarely been possible for them to reach 
the enemy capital or other vital centres 
without first disposing of the enemy’s 
main army, which forms the shield of the 
opposing government and nation. It was 
because of this age-long limitation that 
the short-sighted, if natural, delusion 
arose that the armed forces themselves 
were the real objective. 

But the air has introduced a third 
dimension into warfare, and with the ad- 
vent of the aeroplane new and boundless 
possibilities are introduced. Hitherto wan 
has been a Been game of draughts. 

[ 36 ] 


Pd 


THE AIR WEAPON 


Now it becomes a game of halma. 
Aircraft enables us to jump over the army 
which shields the enemy government, 
industry, and people, and so strike direct 
and immediately at the seat of the oppos- 
ing will and policy. A nation’s nerve- 
system, no longer covered by the flesh 
of its troops, is now laid bare to attack, 
and, like the human nerves, the progress 
of civilization has rendered it far more 
sensitive than in earlier and more primi- 
tive times. 


THE AIR WEAPON 


In the Great War aircraft filled but an 
auxiliary réle to the established arms, and 
their action against the moral objective 
was merely sporadic. The blow planned 
against Berlin, which might have revealed 
beyond question the decisive influence of 
the new arm, was still-born because of 
Germany’s haste to conclude an armistice. 
Those who depreciate the value of the 
air attack point to the comparatively 
small damage wrought by any particular 


37 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


attack in the Great War, arguing also that 
the influx of recruits after some of them 
showed that such “ frightfulness ” brought 
its own recoil in a stiffening of the 
national “ upper lip.” 

The best answer to this short-sighted 
deduction is to present a few facts. 
Between the 31st of May, 1915, and the 
20th May, 1918, the German air-raids 
over the London area were carried out 
with an aggregate force of 13 Zeppelins 
and 128 aeroplanes, dropping in all less 
than 300 tons of bombs. The total result 
was 224 fires, 174 buildings completely 
destroyed, and 619 seriously damaged, a 
damage estimated in money at something 
over £2,000,000. This was achieved for 
the most part in face of strong air and 
ground defences, and in a war where the 
total British air force was never markedly 
inferior in size to its enemy, indeed gen- 
erally the reverse. 

Let us for a moment take a modern 
comparison, simply to point the moral. 
France has ggo aeroplanes in the home 
country, Great Britain 312—and this is 
a notable increase on the situation two 
years ago. Even re an ample mar- 


THE AIR WEAPON 


gin of aircraft to hold the British air 
fleet in check, it would be easily possible 
for a greater weight of bombs to be 
dropped on London in one day than in 
the whole of the Great War, and to repeat 
the dose at frequent and brief intervals. 
A damage spread over three years is a 
flimsy basis on which to estimate the 
moral and material results of such a blow 
concentrated on a single day, delivered 
with an accuracy and destructive effect 
unrealizable by the primitive instruments 
of 1915-1918. Moreover, what is an air 
fleet of a thousand compared with future 
possibilities, as civil aviation develops? 
Witnesses of the earlier air attacks 
before our defence was organized, will 
not be disposed to underestimate the panic 
and disturbance that would result from a 
concentrated blow dealt by a superior air 
fleet. Who that saw it will ever forget 
the nightly sight of the population of a 
great industrial and shipping town, such 
as Hull, streaming out into the fields on 
the first sound of the alarm signals? 
Women, children, babies in arms, spend- 
ing night after night huddled in sodden 
fields, shivering under a bitter wintry sky 


[ 39 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


—the expostire must have caused far more 
harm than the few bombs dropped from 
two or three Zeppelins. 

Of the crippling effect on industrial 
output, let facts speak: “In 1916, hostile 
aircraft approached the Cleveland district 
in thirteen different weeks — which re- 
duced the year’s output in that district by 
390,000 tons (of pig-iron), or one-sixth 
of the annual output. In certain arma- 
ment works it was observed that on the 
days following raids, skilled men made 
more mistakes in precision work than 
usual, the quality of the work done was 
inferior, while air raids made a constant 
output impossible.” 

Those pundits who prate about the 
“armed forces” objective appear to for- 
get that an army without munitions is a 
somewhat useless instrument. 

Imagine for a moment that, of two 
centralized industrial nations at war, one 
possesses a superior air force, the other a 
superior army. Provided that the blow 
be sufficiently swift and powerful, there 
is no reason why within a few hours, or 
at most days from the commencement of 
hostilities, the nerve system of the coun- 


[ 40] 


THE AIR WEAPON 


try inferior in air power should not be 
paralysed. 

A modern state 1s such a complex and 
interdependent fabric that it offers a 
target highly sensitive to a sudden and 
overwhelming blow from the air. We all 
know how great an upset in the daily life 
of the country is caused at the outset 
of a railway strike even. Business is 
disorganized by the delay of the mails 
and the tardy arrival of the staff, the 
shops are at a standstill without fresh 
supplies, the people feel lost without 
newspapers—rumours multiply, and the 
signs of panic and demoralization make 
their appearance. Perhaps an even more 
striking parallel may be found in the 
disruption of the whole life of Japan in 
the recent earthquake. An air attack of 
the intensity that is now possible would 
be likely to excel even this stroke in its 
disorganizing and demoralizing effect. 
Imagine for a moment London, Manches- 
ter, Birmingham, and half a dozen other 
great centres simultaneously attacked, 
the business localities and Fleet Street 
wrecked, Whitehall a heap of ruins, the 
slum districts maddened into the impulse 


[ 41 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


to break loose and maraud, the railways 
cut, factories destroyed. Would not the 
general will to resist vanish, and what use 
would be the still determined fractions 
of the nation, without organization and 
central direction? 

Victory in air war will lie with 
whichever side first gains the moral 
objective. If one side is so foolish as to 
waste time— more the supreme factor 
than ever before—ain searching for the 
armed forces of the enemy, which are 
mobile and capable of concealment, 
then clearly the static civil centres of its 
own land will be paralysed first —and 
the issue will be decided long before the 
side which trusted in the “‘ armed forces ” 
objective has crossed the enemy’s fron- 
tiers. | 

If, on the other hand, the decisiveness 
of the moral objective be admitted, is it 
not the height of absurdity to base the 
military forces of a nation on infantry, 
which would—even if unopposed—take 
weeks to reach Essen or Berlin, for ex- 
ample, when aircraft could reach and de- 
stroy both in a matter of hours? 


[ 42] 


OBJECTIONS TO AIR-ATTACK 


OBJECTIONS TO THE AIR-ATTACK 


To this use of aircraft to gain the moral 
objective there are, however, two possible 
objections, one economic, the other ethi- 
cal. The economic limitation is that by 
destroying the enemy factories and com- 
munications we may so cripple his com- 
merce and industry as seriously to reduce 
his post-war value as a potential customer. 
There is a certain weight in this argu- 
ment, for if one lesson stands out clearly 
from the last war it is that the commerce 
and prosperity of civilized nations are 
. so closely interwoven and interdependent 
that the destruction of the enemy coun- 
try’s economic wealth recoils on the 
head of the victor. The obvious reply, 
however, is that even the widespread dam- 
age of a decisive air attack would inflict 
less total damage and constitute less of 
a drain on the defeated country’s recup- 
erative powers than a prolonged war of 
the existing type. 

The ethical objection is based on the 
seeming brutality of an attack on the civil- 
ian population, and the harmful results to 


[43] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


the aggressor of any outrage of the human 
feelings of the neutral peoples. The 
events of the last war have, however, in 
some measure acclimatised the world to 
the idea that in a war between nations the 
damage cannot be restricted merely to the 
paid gladiators. When, moreover, the 
truth is realized that a swift and sudden 
blow of this nature inflicts a total of 
injury far less than when spread over 
a number of years, the common sense of 
mankind will show that the ethical ob- 
jection to this form of war is at least not 
greater than to the cannon-fodder wars of 
the past. 

But self-interest as well as humane 
reasons demand that the warring nations 
should endeavour to gain their end of 
the moral subjugation of the enemy with 
the infliction of the least possible per- 
manent injury to life and industry, for 
the enemy of today is the customer of 
the morrow, and the ally of the future. 
To inflict widespread death and destruc- 
tion is to damage one’s own future 
prosperity, and, by sowing the seeds of 
revenge, to jeopardize one’s future 
security. Chemical science has provided 


[ 44 | 


OBJECTIONS TO AIR-ATTACK 


mankind with a weapon which reduces 
the necessity for killing and achieves 
decisive effects with far less permanent 
injury than in the case of explosives. 
Gas may well prove the salvation of 
civilization from the otherwise inevitable 
collapse in case of another world war. 
Even with the lethal gases of the last 
war, the use of which was decried as 
barbarous by conventional sentiment, 
statistics show that the proportion of 
deaths to the numbers temporarily 
incapacitated was far less than with the 
accepted weapons, such as bullets and 
shells! Moreover, chemistry affords us 
non-lethal gases which can overcome 
the hostile resistance, and spread panic 
for a period long enough to reap the 
fruits of victory, but without the lasting 
evils of mass killing or destruction of 
_ property. 

Yet we still find that, in defiance of 
reason and history, the governments are 
again striving by international legislation 
to prohibit the use of gas, and to confine 
the blows of aircraft to the traditional 
military objectives. 

It is a strange reflection on the all-too- 


[45 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


frequent lack of vision and common sense, 
that the opposition to the use of gas in 
war comes from an alliance between those 
unwonted bedfellows, the traditional mil- 
itarist and the sentimental pacifist. 

The humanization of war rests not in 
“scraps of paper,” which nations will 
always tear up if they feel that their 
national life is endangered by them, but 
in the enlightened realization that the 
spread of death and destruction endangers 
the victor’s own future prosperity and 
reputation. 

This deeper understanding of war and 
its goal, and consequently more humane 
methods, can only come by stripping war 
of its professional and pacifist catch- 
words, and grasping that the true national 
objective in war lies in the after-war. If 
the civilized world is to be saved from 
collapse, there is an urgent need to pro- 
duce true grand strategists to replace the 
colour-blind exponents of mass destruc- 
tion, who can only see “ red.” 

No more terrible portent for the future 
exists than the fact that the militarist 
nations are awaking to the destructive 
possibilities of the new weapons, while 


[ 46 ] 


OBJECTIONS TO AIR-ATTACK 


the Anglo-Saxon peoples, who are the 
leaders of constructive human progress, 
and hence might be expected to take 
longer views, refuse to think or talk 
about the subject, either from war-weari- 
ness or natural antipathy to war. Like 
the legendary ostrich burying its head 
in the’ sand, they seeraingly hope to 
escape the danger by shutting it out of 
sight, 

Absorbed in building the Temple of 
Peace, they neglect to take into account 
the stresses and strains the edifice may 
have to bear—and then, as before in 
history, are surprised when their plaster 
and stucco temple collapses under the 
rude blast of international storms. 

Of these two new weapons, air suprem- 
acy is possessed by France, chemical 
resources by Germany. A _ significant 
fact is that France lacks the foundations 
on which to build up a great chemical 
plant, whereas Germany, in her rapidly 
developing civil aviation, has a potential 
instrument whereby to employ her 
chemical weapons, with relatively slight 
adaptation. Thus it may not be inapt 
to quote the views of a high German 


[ 47 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


authority, General von Altrock, in the 
Militar-W ochenblatt: “In wars of the 
future the initial hostile attacks will be 
decided against the great nerve and com- 
munication centres of the enemy’s terri- 
tory, against its large cities, factory 
centres, munition areas, water, gas, and 
light supplies; in fact, against every life 
artery of the country. Discharge of poi- 
sonous gases will become the rule since 
great progress has been made in the pro- 
duction of poison gas. Such attacks will 
be carried to great depths in rear of the 
actual fighting troops. Entire regions 
inhabited by peaceful population will be 
continually threatened with extinction. 
The war will frequently have the appear- 
ance of a destruction en masse of the en- 
tire civil population rather than a combat 
of armed men.” 

The curtain is raised a little more in 
the new German manual Der Chemische 
Krieg, which was ably summarized 
recently by the Berlin correspondent of 
The Times. As this manual has a 
number of quotations from the present 
writer's views on future warfare, he 
proposes to repay the compliment by 

[ 48 ] 


OBJECTIONS TO AIR-ATTACK 


quoting certain most significant remarks 
by the authors of this manual: gas is 
termed “a vital weapon put into the 
hands of the nation most highly developed 
in science and technology,’ and one 
which will “confer world importance or 
even world power, on the nation which 
shows supreme capacity in the field ’””— 
if we did not guess it, a study of Ger- 
many’s other post-war manuals would 
leave us no doubt that the Fatherland is 
the country cast for this réle. This con- 
clusion is reinforced by the comments of 
The Times correspondent: ‘ The authors 
of this handbook declare that since the 
end of the war no military question has 
been the field of so much research, and 
we may conclude that Germany, with her 
highly-developed chemical industry, has 
not lagged behind in this respect. ‘It is 
understandable,’ they say, ‘that a thick 
veil of secrecy obscures these prepara- 
HONS C cries 

Of the military advantage of gas, 
especially for a surprise at the outset of 
war, there is no question. It is the only 
weapon which is a commercial product, 
manufactured from chemicals which are 


[ 49 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


an. essential requirement of peace time 
industry. In secrecy of manufacture it 
is unrivalled, and so can defeat the 
intelligence service of other powers. All 
other weapons are, in part at least, 
destined for a definite military purpose, 
and therefore their production in quan- 
tity cannot be kept a complete secret. In 
speed of discharge it is necessarily su- 
preme because it is continuous, which not 
even the quickest firing gun can be, and 
in surprise of discharge also, because it is 
noiseless and, if used at night or combined 
with smoke, invisible. Its volume and 
area of effect is infinitely greater than 
any projectile—the most rapid-firing- 
missile-projector, the machine-gun, can 
only fire 600 bullets a minute, whereas 
the gas cylinder can discharge millions of 
invisible bullets or particles in the same 
time; unlike any projectile it leaves no 
voids unswept in its beaten zone; it 
requires no skill in aiming, and is there- 
fore unaffected by the conditions or 
physical defects of the firer. 

Such are the properties of this ideal 
weapon, which international jurists 
fondly believe their parchment decrees 


[ 50 ] 


OBJECTIONS TO AIR-ATTACK - 


will rule out of future war! However 
blind to the lessons of history, do they 
really believe that a nation which plans 
a military coup, or a “revanche,” will 
discard its strongest trump ? 

If, then, gas seems destined to replace 
the bullet and the shell, so equally does 
the aeroplane appear likely to supersede 
the gun as the means of projection— 
and, like gas, aircraft are a weapon not 
exclusively military, but resting on a 
civil basis. Their transformation from 
a civil to a military use is far simpler 
than with any of the old-established 
arms. This fact has a vital bearing on 
the present world situation, for the 
geographical situation of the continental 
countries, France and Germany in par- 
ticular, lends itself to the expansion of 
air transport far better than that of 
Great Britain, and thus in any race for 
air supremacy the former obtain a 
“flying” start difficult to over-value. 
In the present stage of aircraft develop- 
ment the central position of these con- 
tinental countries makes them the natural 
hub of Europe’s air routes. England, in 
contrast, is thrown back into her medizval 


[52] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


position, before the Age of Discovery 
led to the development of trans-ocean 
shipping—in semi-isolation on the edge 
of the continental transport system. 
Though the aerial successors of Columbus 
have already linked the New and Old 
Worlds, it must still be some time before 
trans-ocean flying becomes a _ normal 
service. Then, and only then, will the 
axis of air communications again be 
shifted to the British Isles, as was that 
of sea transport by the original discovery 
of America. 

As for the two great Pacific powers, 
the United States are in an excellent posi- 
tion for the growth of a strong civil 
aviation, because the vast breadth of 
North America places a premium on any 
new and speedier form of transport, 
whereas Japan suffers, in greater degree, 
the disadvantages of England’s insular 
and border situation, so that her air de- 
velopment must perforce be an artificial 
military growth instead of springing 
naturally from civil “ roots.” 

Moreover, these can only grow firmly 
and spread in an industrial soil—in the 
mechanical future of war supremacy will 


[ 52 ] 


ARE ARMIES OBSOLETE? 


go to the nation with the greatest indus- 
trial resources. 

But Americans would do well to 
remember that the Japanese military 
leaders are disciples of Clausewitz, and 
that one of his axioms reads: “A small 
state which is involved with a superior 
power, and foresees that each year its 
position will become worse,” should, if 
it considers war inevitable, ‘‘ seize the 
time when the situation is furthest from 
the = -worst,’-. and “attack. “It. was on 
this principle that Japan declared 
war on Russia, and for the United 
States the next decade is the danger 
period, 


ARE ARMIES AND NAVIES OBSOLETE? 


In view of the transcendent value of 
aircraft as a means of subduing the 
enemy will to resist, by striking at the 
moral objective, the question may well 
be asked: Is the air the sole medium of 
future warfare? That this will be the 
case ultimately we have no doubt, for 


[53] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


the advantages of a weapon able to move 
in three dimensions over those tied to 
one plane of movement are surely obvious 
_ to all but the mentally blind. But we 
are dealing with the immediate future, 
and an uncertain period may elapse 
before aircraft can combine with their 
superior power of movement the radius 
of action, reliability and hitting power of 
the other weapons. In pointing out the 
decisiveness of an air blow at the enemy 
nation’s nerve system, we pre-supposed 
two conditions; first, a superior air 
force; second, a centralized objective 
such as a_highly-developed industrial 
state offers. The European nations and 
Japan afford such a target to air attack, 
but not so a country as vast as the United 
States; until the latter develops into a 
more closely-knit fabric, and the radius 
of air action is greatly increased, an air 
attack against it could hardly be decisive, 
however locally unpleasant. Washing- 
ton laid in ruins would merely provide 
“Main Street” with a fresh supply of 
small talk; New York paralysed would 
leave the Middle West unmoved, even the 
desolation of the Pacific coast would but 


[54] 


ARE ARMIES OBSOLETE? 


‘ 


inconvenience the “ movie fans” of the 
nation. 

Moreover, though, in Europe, an air 
blow would be decisive, its achievement 
would probably depend on one side being 
superior in the air, either in numbers of 
aircraft or by the possession of some 
surprise device. Where air equality 
existed between the rival nations, and 
each was_as industrially and politically 
vulnerable, it is possible that either would 
hesitate to employ the air attack for fear 
of instant retaliation. 

A boxer with a punch in either fist 
enjoys both a moral and a physical 
advantage, and the same is true of a 
nation that, if its initial air blow is 
frustrated or is lacking in the necessary 
margin of superiority, can bring another 
weapon into play. 

This truth is but the translation into 
future grand strategy of the immemorial 
key to victory used by the Great Captains 
of War—striking at the enemy from two 
directions simultaneously, so that in try- 
ing to parry the one blow he exposes 
himself to the other. 

Nevertheless, the continuance of an 


£55) 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


alternative weapon to the aeroplane does 
not mean that armies, at least, will 
survive in their present form. An exist- 
ing pattern army has as much “ punch” 
as a stuffed bolster—size is no criterion 
of hitting power. 

If, however, the sea and land weapons 
are likely to continue until the air weapon 
reaches maturity, a study of the future 
of war would be incomplete without a 
discussion of their tendencies and 
development—and of the ways by 
which they may help to gain the moral 
objective. 


THE NAVAL WEAPON 


A fleet suffers one fundamental limita- 
tion on its freedom of action—it is tied 
to the sea. Hence it cannot strike 
directly at the hostile nation. Its action 
is either directed against the enemy’s 
stomach, and through that to his moral, 
or in conveying and serving as a floating 
base for troops or aircraft. : 

As with land warfare, the destruction 


[56] 


THE NAVAL WEAPON 


of the enemy’s main fleet is often spoken 
of as the objective, whereas in reality this 
act is but a means towards it—by the 
destruction of the enemy’s shield the way 
is opened for a more effective blockade 
or for the landing of an army. Like land 
warfare, also, the knowledge that its 
coasts are thus rendered defenceless, may 
cause a nation to sue for peace rather 
than await inevitable starvation or in- 
vasion. 

But just as the value of armies has been 
radically affected by the conquest of the 
air, so has that of surface fleets by the 
coming of that other new and _ three- 
dimensional weapon, the submarine. In- 
stead of hopping over the enemy’s shield 
as does the aeroplane, the submarine 
dives under it. In the Great War a sub- 
marine blockade almost brought the 
supreme naval power to its knees by 
starvation—yet Germany never had more 
than 175 submarines. 

The fundamental purpose of a navy is 
to protect a nation’s sea communications 
and sever those of the enemy, and as, 
therefore, blockade is the main offensive 
role of the naval weapon, it behooves us to 


[57] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


examine the future of this means to the 
moral objective. 

Since the war controversy has raged 
round the respective merits of the battle- 
ship, submarine, and naval aeroplane, as 
destructive weapons. Into this I have no 
intention of entering—not only because 
the problem demands a technical knowl- 
edge of sea warfare to which I have no 
pretensions, but also because the rival 
arguments, in their absorption with a 
means, overlook the end. Steering clear 
of the Sargasso Sea of technical values, 
let us rather direct our course, by the 
compass of grand strategy, on the true 
objective of the naval weapon. Nations 
cannot afford to stake their existence on a 
gamble in “ futures,” and therefore until 
a new weapon has attained an all-round 
superiority to the existing ones, it would 
be rash to adopt it exclusively. The 
battleship retains the sovereignty of the 
oceans for some time to come at least, 
but in the narrow seas has yielded pride 
of place to the submarine—if the lessons 
of the Great War be assessed. Here is 
the crux of the matter. 

Thus France is wise in concentrating 


[58] 


THE NAVAL WEAPON 


mainly on the new weapon, whereas Great 
Britain and the United States, being con- 
cerned equally with ocean communica- 
tions, cannot yet afford te abandon the 
surface-going capital ship. 

The vital question of the future is how 
this transfer of power over the narrow 
seas affects the international situation— 
particularly that of Great Britain, which 
is concerned with both spheres of sea- 
power. 

Glance for a moment at a map of 
Europe —it will be seen that Great 
Britain lies like a huge breakwater across 
the sea approaches to Northern Europe, 
with Ireland as a smaller breakwater 
across the approaches to Great Britain. 


We realize that in the Great War, Ger-..... 


many was in the most wunfavourable 
position possible for blockading England’s 
sea communications, her submarines 
having first to get outside this break- 
water through a narrow outlet sown with 
mines and closely watched, and on com- 
pletion of this mission make the same 
hazardous return to their bases. No 
stronger proof of the potential menace of 
the submarine in future war can be found 


[59] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


than that Germany, with so few sub- 
marines and despite such an immense 
handicap, sank 8,500,000 tons of shipping, 
and all but stopped the beat of Britain’s 
heart. 

Contrast with this the geographical 
position of France, the chief submarine 
power of the immediate future. Her 
Atlantic bases lie directly opposite the 
sea approaches to the British Isles—in 
an ideal position for submarine action to 
block the sea arteries on which England’s 
life depends. Of potential significance 
also is the position of Ireland, an outer 
breakwater lying across the gateways to 
Great Britain, for should Ireland ever 
lend its harbours to an enemy as sub- 
marine bases, the odds would be hopeless. 

Turn again to the Mediterranean, 
another long and narrow sea channel 
through which runs our artery with the 
East, and where our main naval force is 
now concentrated. Note that our ships, 
naval or mercantile, must traverse the 
length of this channel, and worse still, 
have to filter through a tiny hole at each 
end—the straits of Gibraltar and the Suez 
Canal—while ey sari is a narrow 

[ 60 


THE NAVAL WEAPON 


“waist” between Sicily and Tunis, 
barely ninety miles across. 

Then look at the geographical position 
of Toulon and of the French naval ports 
on the North African coast, and note how 
the radii of submarine attack intersect 
the long single line of British sea commu- 
nication. Is it not obvious that if in a 
future war any Mediterranean power was 
numbered among Britain’s enemies, her 
fleet would find it difficult enough to pro- 
tect itself against submarines, let alone 
protect merchant convoys and troop trans- 
ports? When to the proved menace of 
submarine power is added the potential 
effect of aircraft attack against shipping 
in the narrow seas, it is time the British 
people awoke to the fact that, in case of 
such a war, the Mediterranean would be 
impassable, and that this important artery 
would have to be abandoned. Thus, as a 
strategical asset, the Suez Canal has lost 
a large part of its value in face of modern 
naval and air development—for in such 
a war we should be driven to close the 
Mediterranean route, and divert our im- 
perial communications round the Cape of 
Good Hope. , 

[ 67 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


Nor can it do any harm for our poli- 
ticians and people to realize the unques- 
tionable if unpalatable fact that the exist- 
ence of this country is dependent on the 
good-will of France, the supreme air and 
submarine power commanding both the 
vital centres of England and our oversea 
communications at their most vulnerable 
points—that “ Paris” is able to shoot at 
our Achilles’ heel, and has “two strings 
to its bow” for the purpose. 


THE ARMY WEAPON 


Finally, what is the future of this 
alternative “punch” to the air attack? 
No future, assuredly, unless the army 
limb of the body military is thoroughly 
overhauled and inoculated with the serum 
of mobility, for the present type of army 
is suffering from chronic rheumatoid 
arthritis, its joints far too stiff to deliver 
an effective punch. The outstanding 
lesson of the Great War was the power- 
lessness of the high commands to attain 
decisive successes —a condition due to 


[ 62 ] 


THE ARMY WEAPON 


three main factors. First, the unwieldy 
masses put into the field allowed neither 
opportunity nor room for manceuvre; sec- 
ond, these slow-moving infantry masses 
were too vulnerable a target to modern 
fire-weapons; third, their numbers im- 
posed so great a strain on the means of 
supply that offensive after offensive was 
stultified by the breakdown of communi- 
cations —the commanders of the Great 
War were as unhappily placed as the 
proverbial puppy with a tin can attached 
to its tail. 

The years 1914-18 show the “ Nation 
in Arms” theory carried to its climax; 
numbers of troops and quantity of mate- 
rial had been the ruling ideas of the Gen- 
eral Staffs of Europe for half a century. 
What was the upshot? That generalship 
became the slave of the monster it had 
created. The artist of war yielded 
place to the artisan, because we forgot 
the text preached by Marshal Saxe two 
centuries before, that “‘ multitudes serve 
only to perplex and embarrass.” Watch- 
ing it from across the Styx, Marshal 
Saxe can be imagined as uttering that 
favourite quotation of his: “War is a 


[ 63 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


trade for the ignorant, a science for men 
of genius.” 

What are the obvious deductions from 
the three factors we have mentioned? 

The rear communications of existing 
armies are based on railways, the ad- 
vanced communications on roads, both of 
which have proved inadequate to stand 
even the internal strain of modern war- 
fare. In the last war they suffered little 
external interference from enemy air- 
craft, but in the future this is a certainty. 
Both these means of communication de- 
pend on fixed tracks, which cannot be 
varied save after a long period of labour 
and preparation; since they are shown on 
the map they are easily located and can 
be kept under observation from the air. 
If railways, because of their visibility and 
limited number of routes, are in them- 
selves the more vulnerable, no more help- 
less target exists than long columns of 
slow-moving infantry on the march. A 
vivid picture of the chaos caused by air 
attack is to be found in Major-General 
Gathorne-Hardy’s account of the ghastly 
fate of the Austrian columns and trans- 
port after Vittorio Veneto in October, 


[ 64 ] 


THE ARMY WEAPON 


1918. If they are not bombed out of ex- 
istence, air-attack will at least force them 
to disperse and take cover so frequently 
as to slow up their rate of advance to 
a snail’s pace, while days of bombing by 
hostile aircraft will hardly be a tonic for 
their moral. 

Thus the nation which continues to 
base its military communications on rail- 
ways and roads is running for a fall. 
What is the alternative? The opposite 
method to tracked movement is track- 
less — by means of caterpillar track or 
multi-wheeled vehicles capable of quit- 
ting the roads at will on the approach of 
hostile aircraft, and of advancing on a 
wide front, instead of through a bottle- 
neck. 

If infantry, because of certain limi- 
tations on tank-action, may still survive 
for a time as a battle-instrument, it is 
the merest common sense that they should 
be transported to the battlefield, their 
3—5 m.p.h. legs replaced by 15—25 m.p.h. 
mechanical tracks—not only because 
they may thus be kept fresh for their 
fighting role, but because otherwise they 
will never reach the battlefield at all. 


[65 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


The advent of aircraft has had another 
important consequence. Just as in the 
wider sphere, their power to hop over a 
hostile army enables them to. strike 
direct at the political and industrial 
centres of the nation, so in the zone of 
the armies has it laid bare the life-line of 
the hostile army itself — its communica- 
tions. 

The obvious antidote to this new devel- 
opment is to make the communications 
fluid instead of rigid, and by putting the 
supply and transport of armies on a track- 
less basis, we not only revive their 
“punch” by endowing them with mobil- 
ity, but extract much of the sting from 
the military form of the air attack. 

Turning to the second factor, that of 
vulnerability in battle, here again a new 
weapon has revolutionized the methods 
of warfare by providing soldiers with a 
machine-made skin to offset the deadli- 
ness of modern fire. Not that armour is 
a new invention, but until the advent of 
the tank provided him with mechanical 
legs, man’s muscle-power was insufficient 
to move him when enclosed in an 
armoured shell. N bee changed long ago 


THE ARMY WEAPON 


from muscle-power to machine-power, 
alike for hitting, protection, and move- 
ment. Armies had to lag behind until 
the invention of the motor because they 
could not ask the already over-burdened 
foot-soldier to carry armour—if he had 
been given it he could not have moved it. 
Now, however, that a means has been 
invented, is it not irrational to stand out 
against the lessons of national progress, 
to refuse to free the soldier’s mind and 
spirit—his real military assets—from the 
fetters imposed by his bodily limitations ? 

Military conservatives are prone to 
talk of “ Men v. Machines,” as if they 
were conflicting ideals, whereas in real- 
ity neither opposition nor comparison is 
possible. We should not fall into the 
absurdity of comparing man with a 
locomotive or a sculptor with his tools, 
and mechanical weapons are but the 
instruments of man’s brain and spirit. 
The reactionary who opposes the in- 
evitable course of evolution forgets that 
the question of muscle-force versus 
machine-force was settled away back in 
the Stone Age when the prehistoric 
fighting man discovered that a flint-axe 


[67 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


was a more potent weapon than his bare 
fist. Moral depends ultimately on confi- 
dence, and even the finest troops will lose 
their moral if they are reduced to the rote 
of mere human stop-butts, powerless to 
hit back. 

The layman is apt to feel mystified by 
the fog of technical controversy that 
surrounds the merits of the various arms. 
To dissipate this by a breeze of common 
sense, let us put the simple question: How 
can the old-established arms combat the 
new—tanks and aircraft? 

First, infantry — whose weapons are 
machine-guns, light automatics and rifles. 
They cannot attack the tank, because 
even if they had weapons that could 
penetrate the tank’s armour, the latter’s 
speed would enable it to avoid conflict at 
will. Similarly, infantry have no power 
to hit the aeroplane unless it swoops 
very low, whereas it can remain at a 
moderate height and bomb its helpless 
foes. 

For defence against either, infantry are 
dependent on the help of other arms or on 
going to earth like rabbits—in which case 
their offensive value in war is nil. 


THE ARMY WEAPON 


A business which retained the aged and 
infirm as the bulk of its employees would 
soon be bankrupt; it may find use for a 
few as caretakers—and that is the only 
feasible role for infantry in mobile war- 
fare of the future. 

It is needless to consider cavalry, for 
they suffer all the disabilities, save one, of 
infantry, and in greater degree because 
they offer a larger and more vulnerable 
target. The sole exception is that they can 
run away faster! 

Then, with regard to field artillery— 
though ’ moderately effective against the 
sluggish tanks of the Great War, its 
chances would be infinitely less against a 
modern tank zigzagging at over 20 m.p.h., 
and infinitesimal against them if launched 
in masses. If it cannot hit, it will be hit. 
In any case, its value depends on the 
tanks coming to meet it; its réle thus be- 
comes purely defensive. Only by being 
fitted in a tank—the obvious solution— 
can it compel the tank to come to action, 
and resume its offensive role in a war of 
movement. 

Though the tank is not yet perfect—it 
is only as old as the automobile of 1902, 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


or the aeroplane of 1910—the fact that it 
combines in itself the three essential 
elements of warfare—hitting power, pro- 
tection, and mobility — makes it clearly 
superior in normal country to any of the 
existing arms, which are deficient in one, 
or all, of these elements. To anyone who 
has experienced the sense of helplessness 
caused by the sight of the modern tanks 
racing towards one at 20 m.p.h., sweeping 
over banks and nullahs, swinging round 
with amazing agility in their own length, 
the question arises: “Can flesh and 
blood, however heroic, be persuaded to 
face them?” It is a sight to freeze the 
blood of a witness with imagination to 
grasp the demoralizing effect if their guns 
and machine-guns were actually spitting 
forth death. 

The tank has its limitations; there are 
certain types of ground on which it is 
handicapped—hills, woods, and swamps, 
and certain defences against which it is 
helpless. By taking advantage of such 
partially tank-proof terrain, infantry may 
survive for a time. But the limitations of 
the tank are exaggerated by the fact that 
its tactics have not been thought out and 


[70 ] 


THE ARMY WEAPON 


adapted to its qualities and limitations. 
Regarded as a mere prop to an arm— 
infantry—too helpless to look-after itself, 
it has been frittered away in driblets or 
under unsuitable conditions —as in the 
swamps of Passchendaele. 

To discover its true use let me suggest 
an historical parallel: 

The military bulwark of the Roman 
Empire was its legions, for six centuries 
the “ queen of battle,” defying all efforts 
to oppose them by like means. On the 
oth August, 378 av., on the plains of 
Adrianople, they met a new challenge— 
the cavalry of the Goths. “The Goths 
swept down on the flank of the Roman 
infantry, so tremendous was the impact 
that the legions were pushed together in 
helpless confusion. . . . Into this quiv- 
ering mass the Goths rode, plying sword 
and lance against the helpless enemy.” 
When the sun went down that evening, 
it set not only on the great Roman Em- 
pire, but on the reign of infantry— 
the instrument and token of Roman 
world-power. The age of cavalry was 
ushered in. 

Fifteen hundred years later the German 


[71] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


army was, in turn, the traditional symbol 
of military power. For four years, her 
machine-gunners, heirs of the Roman 
legionaries, defied all the efforts of ortho- 
dox tactics to overthrow them. 

On the 8th of August, 1918, the Ger- 
man infantry legions were overrun and 
slaughtered by the onset of the British 
tanks, almost as helplessly as their fore- 
runners at Adrianople, exactly fifteen 
hundred and forty years before. Let the 
story be epitomized in the words of the 
enemy, of Ludendorf himself: 

“ August 8th was the black day of the 
German army in the history of the war. 
The divisions in line allowed themselves 
to be completely overwhelmed. Divisional 
staffs were surprised in their head- 
quarters by enemy tanks.’ On the final 
phase of the war the verdict of Luden- 
dorf was “mass attacks by tanks ... 
remained hereafter our most dangerous 
enemies.” 

The lesson to be drawn from this 
historical analogy is that the tank attack 
is the modern substitute for the cavalry 
charge, the supreme value of which lay in 
its speed and impetus of assault, and the 

[ 72 | 


THE ARMY WEAPON 


demoralizing effect of its furious onset. 
The deadliness of modern fire-weapons 
brought about the extinction of the cav- 
alry charge, and with its disappearance 
warfare became lopsided and stagnant. 
The stalemates of recent campaigns are 
to be traced to the lack of any means of 
delivering and exploiting a decisive blow. 
If, instead of regarding cavalry as men 
on horseback, soldiers thought of it as the 
mobile arm, the main cause of the in- 
terminable siege warfare of the Russo- 
Japanese and Great Wars would be 
apparent. The practical view of history 
lies in projecting the film of the past on 
the blank screen of the future. 

Once appreciate that tanks are not an 
extra arm or a mere aid to infantry but 
the modern form of heavy cavalry and 
their true military use is obvious—to be 
concentrated and used in as large masses 
as possible for a decisive blow against the 
Achilles’ heel of the enemy army, the 
communications and command centres 
which form its nerve system. Then not 
only may we see the rescue of mobility 
from the toils of trench-warfare, but with 
it the revival of generalship and the art 


[ 73 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


of war, in contrast to its mere mechanics. 
Instead of machines threatening to be- 
come the master of men, as they actually 
did in 1914-18, they will give man back 
opportunities for the use of his art and 
brain, and on the battlefields of the future 
may be expected the triumphs of an 
» Arbela, of quality over quantity. “It is 
the Man, not men, who count in war.” 
The tank assault of to-morrow is but the 
long-awaited re-birth of the cavalry 
charge, with the merely material changes 
that moving fire is added to shock, and 
that the armoured cavalry-tank replaces 
the vulnerable cavalry-horse. Thus, to 
paraphrase, “‘ The cavalry is dead! Long 
live the cavalry!” 

The last war was the culmination of 
brute force; the next will be the vindi- 
cation of moral force, even in the realm 
of the armies. From the delusion that 
the armed forces themselves were the real 
objective in war, it was the natural 
sequence of ideas that the combatant 
troops who composed the armies should be 
regarded as the object to strike at. 

Thus progressive butchery, politely 
called “attrition,” becomes the essence 


[74] 


THE ARMY WEAPON 


of war. To kill, if possible, more of the 
enemy troops than your own side loses, is 
the sum total of this military creed, which 
attained its tragi-comic climax on the 
Western front in the Great War. 

The absurdity and wrong-headedness 
of this doctrine should surely have been 
apparent to any mind which attempted to 
think logically instead of blindly accept- 
ing inherited traditions. War is but a 
duel between two nations instead of two 
individuals. A moment’s unprejudiced re- 
flection on the analogy of a boxing match 
would be sufficient to reveal the objective 
dictated by common sense. Only the most 
stupid boxer would attempt to beat his 
opponent by battering and bruising the 
latter’s flesh until at last he weakens and 
yields. Even if this method of attrition 
finally succeeds, it is probable that the 
victor himself will be exhausted and in- 
jured. The victorious boxer, however, has 
won his stake, and can afford not to worry 
over the period of convalescence, whereas 
the recovery of a nation is a slow and 
painful process—as the people of these 
Isles know to their cost. 

A boxer who uses his intelligence, how- 


[75] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


ever, aims to strike a single decisive blow 
/ as early as possible against some vital 
/ point—the jaw or the solar plexus— 
/ which will instantly paralyse his oppo- 
/ nent’s resistance. Thus he gains his 
objective without himself suffering seri- 
ously. Surely those responsible for the 
\ direction of war might be expected to use 
their intelligence as much as a profes- 
sional pugilist ? 

The first gleam of light on the military 
horizon appeared in the closing stages of 
the Great War. Recent publications have 
revealed that in 1918 the Tank Corps 
General Staff put forward a scheme, orig- 
inating, it is understood, with its chief, 
Colonel Fuller, to strike at the nerve 
centres of the German army instead of 
at its flesh and blood—the fighting troops. 
Reflection on the disaster of March, 1918, 
showed that its extent was due far more 
to the breakdown of command and staff 
control than to the collapse of the infan- 
try resistance. A scheme was evolved to 
launch a fleet of light fast tanks, under 
cover of a general offensive, which should 
pass through the German lines, and, neg- 
lecting the fighting poke aim straight 

[ 76 ] 


THE ARMY WEAPON. 


for the command and communication 
centres in rear of the front. By the anni- 
hilation of these, the disorganization and 
capitulation of the combatant units was 
visualized—for without orders, without 
co-ordination, without supplies, an army 
is but a panic and famine-stricken mob, 
incapable of effective action. 

This plan, adapted as the basic tactical 
idea for 1919, had the war lasted, heralds 
the dawn of scientific military thought in 
its grasp of the truth that even the mili- 
tary objective is a moral one—the paraly- 
sis of the enemy’s command and not the 
bodies of the actual soldiers. 

“The wheel has come full circle,” for 
this blow at the hostile command was the 
method of Alexander, one of the greatest 
captains in all history—and who, unlike 
Napoleon, attained his ultimate political 
objective in its entirety. It was thus at 
Arbela that Alexander, with a small but 
highly trained force, manceuvred to strike 
through a gap at Darius, and with the 
flight of its chief the huge Persian army 


\. dissolved into a mob, its superior numbers 


"but an encumbrance. 


[77] . 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


THE EVOLUTION OF “‘ NEW MODEL ” 
ARMIES 


“Rome was not built in a day ’—nor 
will be the armies of the “new model,” 
though, since the history of the material 
world is a tale of the replacement of the 
human muscles by machines, the end 
is inevitable. Civil developments in me- 
chanical science have repeatedly and 
continuously influenced and changed the 
methods of warfare. The longbows of 
medizval England had to give way to the 
musket, the “ wooden walls” of Nelson’s 
time yielded to the ironclad, the sailing 
ship was replaced by the steamship. But 
natural conservatism and financial strin- 
gency make rapid changes in peace-time 
unlikely. 

Thus the first stage will probably be to 
provide infantry with mechanical legs to 
carry them to the battlefield, to replace 
horse-drawn artillery with motor-drawn, 
or motor-borne guns, and to develop the 
tank arm to the proportion that its tacti- 
cal importance as the heir of cavalry de- 
mands. With their aoe no longer 


[78 


“NEW MODEL” ARMIES 


tied to roads and railways, such armies 
could well make advances of a hundred 
miles in the day. 

A longer period must elapse before 
tanks swallow the older arms completely, 
though the absorption of these Jonahs 
will be hastened if the military leaders 
of the nations realize that the gas-weapon 
has come to stay, notwithstanding the 
paper decrees of Leagues and Confer- 
ences. 

To realize this we have only to ask the 
question: How can the respective arms 
protect themselves against gas? Ajir- 
craft, by rising above it; tanks, by being 
air-tight and producing their own oxygen 
inside; infantry, cavalry, artillery, by 
the use of some form of respirator. A 
respirator is only proof against known 
kinds of gas; it cannot be worn for long 
without incapacitating its wearer from 
active exertion; it cannot protect the 
whole body, unless it be developed into a 
complete diver’s suit, in which movement 
would be almost impossible. If a man 
cannot move freely, he cannot fight. If 
a horse cannot move, what use is his 
rider? If the artillery-man cannot serve 


‘[79] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


the gun freely and the gun is immovable, 
field artillery is useless. Therefore, if gas 
becomes a standard weapon, we are left 
with the tank and the aeroplane as the 
sole effective arms for offensive action. 
Only as the static defenders of the forti- 
fied bases—the land-ports—of tanks and 
aircraft will there be a future for infan- 
try and artillery, the former armed with 
super-heavy armour-piercing machine- 
guns, and the latter with anti-tank and 
anti-aircraft guns. 

How long even tanks will persist is a 
moot point. To hit so small and rapidly 
moving a target is not easy for the 
aeroplane, and if it come low, the tank 
can hit back. In the next lap of the 
immemorial race between the means of 
offence and protection, mobility is on the 
side of the aeroplane, but gravity on that 
of the tank—in increasing the degree of 
armour. 

Again, though gas is the weapon which 
will sign the death-warrant of the tradi- 
tional arms, and by which the new arms 
will attack the enemy nation, its very tri- 
umph will cause one more revolution of 
the eternal cycle. 


“NEW MODEL” ARMIES 


Since both are gas-proof, the armour- 
piercing projectile will come back into its 
own for air and tank battles. Both 
machines also are self-contained fighting 
organisms, combining hitting power, mo- 
bility and protection. What present type 
of weapon already possesses this combi- 
nation? The warship. 

Thus the tactics of tank versus tank 
will conform to those of naval war, while 
overhead Tennyson’s “ Airy navies grap- 
pling in the central blue”’ find literal and 
not only figurative fulfilment. 

Although overland warfare will ulti- 
mately assume a close resemblance to sea 
fighting, the novelists’ dream of land 
“dreadnoughts ” is unlikely of fruition. 
The obstacles met with on land, the 
benefit of using an already cleared and 
graduated path, such as road systems 
provide through and over these obstacles, | 
the load-capacity and width of bridges, 
will limit the size of the landships. Even 
the amphibious tank does not solve the 
problem of getting out of a river with 
steep banks. 

Thus a concentrated essence of fighting 
power, rather than bulk, will be the aim 

[ 81 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


of the tank designers of the future, just 
as the organizers of armies will pin their 
faith on quality instead of quantity, 
turning for inspiration to Alexander 
Xenophon and Gustavus Adolphus in 
place of Clausewitz. Not “ how large,” 
but ‘how good ” will be the standard of 
to-morrow. 

To sum up our deductions—The land 
“punch” of the future will be delivered 
by fleets of tanks, their communications, 
maintained by cross-country and air 
vehicles, offering no fixed and vulnerable 
target for an enemy blow, either on land 
or from the air. These quick-moving and 
quick-hitting forces will advance by rapid 
bounds into the enemy country to strike 
at its vitals, establishing behind them, 
as they progress, a chain of fortified 
bases, garrisoned by heavy artillery and 
land marines—late infantry. A propor- 
tion of land marines might also be carried 
in this tank fleet to be used as “ landing 
parties”? to clear fortifications and hill 
defences under cover of the fire from the 
tank fleet. 

Speed, on land as in the air, will domi- 
nate the next ee Leis omang the bat- 

2 | 


“NEW MODEL” ARMIES 


tlefields of the future from squalid trench 
labyrinths into arenas where surprise and 
manceuvre will reign again, restored to 
life and emerging from the mausoleums 
of mud built by Clausewitz and his suc- 
cessors. 


[83] 


EPILOGUE 


THE critic may ask why this survey has 
been confined to weapons already known, 
why, in our forecast, we have not en- 
deavoured to imitate the imaginative 
flights of a Jules Verne or an H. G. Wells 
in the past? The future may bring to 
fruition the sensational dreams of the 
novelist—discovery in bacteriological and 
electrical science may lead to the wars of 
the future being waged by means of the 
germs, or the green, purple, and other 
“death ”’ rays, lurid in hue and effect, 
which form the properties of the prophetic 
novelist. But for a reasoned attempt to 
forecast the future of war we cannot rely 
on hypothetical. discoveries of a revolu- 
tionary nature— which may prove but 
chimeras in the desert. For our sugges- 
tions to have a practical value, they must 
be based, not on the shifting sands of 
speculations, but on solid rock—the evolu- 
tionary development of weapons and pow- 


EPILOGUE 


ers already available. We appreciate that 
further scientific discoveries may modify 
our conclusions as to the means by which 
the moral objective is gained—but the 
goal itself will remain true. 

It is hoped that the danger and futility 
of the Napoleonic doctrine of “ absolute 
war,’ and of its fungus growth—the 
“nation in arms,” has been demonstrated 
so clearly that they may be cast on the 
ash-heap. Let us never again confound 
the means with the end. The goal in war 
is the prosperous continuance of national 
policy in the years after the war, and the 
only true objective is the moral one of 
subduing the enemy’s will to resist with 
the least possible economic, human, and 
ethical loss—which implies a far-sighted 
choice, and blend, of the weapons most 
suitable for our purpose. A statue of 
General Sherman in Washington bears 
this inscription: “ The legitimate object 
of war is a more perfect peace.” The 
phrase is too narrow, and warring nations 
reck little of legitimacy — but common 
sense, reinforced by bitter experience, 
should lead the grand strategists of the 
future to the wider truth that a more 


85 ] 


THE FUTURE OF WAR 


perfect peace is the only rational object 
of war, and that any military plan or act 
which infringes this prospect causes a bad 
debt on the balance sheet of victory. May 
the nations and their political and military 
chiefs remember the words of Solomon: 
“Where there is no vision, the people 
perish.” Future wars will be waged by 
weapons that are the product of peace- 
time industry; these weapons will be 
directed against the nerve centres and 
arteries of civil life, and if wisdom pre- 
vail, the ultimate peace will be the guiding 
star of the military policy and plans. 
Weapons, target, and aim will alike be 
civil. The future of war lies in the future 


of peace, 


[86] 











hee” 








